Author: DALZIEL, Gavin
Biography:
DALZIEL, Gavin (1762- c. 1832: ancestry.co.uk)
A weaver who was successively a chapman, teacher, and army volunteer, he was born at Cumnock, Ayrshire, to William Dalziel (or Dalziell) and his wife, Sarah (Lockie). He became a weaver like his father but gave up the trade for the wandering life of a chapman. He had an unkempt appearance; Paterson describes him as looking like “a person in the last stage of consumption.” He married—his wife Margaret was a spinner—and settled in Ayr where he began teaching. After the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, he joined the army and was put to work teaching the corps until he was discharged as unfit for service. He and Margaret returned to Cumnock where he was a well-known local figure. The exact date of his death has not been discovered. The 1841 Census records Margaret as still living in Cumnock. PP says that he published a collection of poems dedicated to William Motherwell (q.v.) in 1827 but no record of this book has been located. The 1792 edition of James Fisher’s Poems on Various Subjects includes a poem to Dalziel (“An Epistle to Gavin Dalyell”). (James Paterson, The Contemporaries of Burns [1840]; PP; ancestry.co.uk 7 July 2020) SR